The Russian government has lifted the moratorium on antimonopoly inspections of IT companies

The moratorium on antimonopoly inspections of IT companies has been cancelled, follows from the corresponding resolution published on the website of the official publication of legal acts today, March 20. The document comes into force on March 28. The government introduced a three-year moratorium on inspections of accredited IT companies in March 2022 by Resolution No. 448. We are talking about both state and municipal inspections.

“The Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia receives a large number of complaints from participants in the information technology market, including small and medium-sized enterprises and consumers, about violations by dominant companies, inspections in respect of which are limited due to the imposed moratorium,” says a message published on the official service website. They emphasized that the exclusion of antimonopoly control from the moratorium on inspections of IT companies will make it possible to effectively combat abuses on the part of dominant digital services and platforms, protect the rights and interests of small and medium-sized businesses, as well as “prevent cartelization in the field of information technology” and promote development industry in conditions of fair competition.

The Ministry of Digital Development explained that the lifting of the moratorium on inspections will affect only a few IT companies: “This change concerns primarily Article 10.1 of the Federal Law “On Competition.” It provides for a ban on the abuse of the dominant position of business entities that own a digital platform.” Such digital platforms include an extremely small number of participants in the IT market, the ministry says, since the organization:

• must have a digital platform;
• the share of transactions between buyer and seller must be more than 35% of all transactions in this market;
• revenue should be over 2 billion rubles.

The Ministry of Digital Development insists that the moratorium will continue to apply to all scheduled inspections, including those related to compliance with antimonopoly legislation.

The fact that antimonopoly regulation will soon be removed from the moratorium on inspections of IT companies became known on March 5. Thus, during a meeting of the Federation Council committee on economic policy, FAS head Maxim Shaskolsky stated, that the powers of the service were “slightly limited due to Resolution 448”: “My colleagues and I did the work and came to the conclusion that it is time to remove antimonopoly control from the resolution, and this will be done in the coming days.” First of all, we can talk about marketplaces and aggregators Yandex.Taxi, Wildberries and Ozon, market participants specified. The companies themselves assured that the lifting of the moratorium would not have a negative impact on their work. But at the same time they clarified that strict regulation could create problems for e-commerce.

About what preceded the lifting of the moratorium on inspections is in the Kommersant article “FAS will look at marketplaces and aggregators“

Yulia Yurasova